


Somewhere Between Misery

by newtheglue



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: 4x12 - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, That Thing still happens but uhh.. its barely mentioned, basically q talks about the mosaic because i needed that to happen, extremely rushed sorry, just a little
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 08:35:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18426927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newtheglue/pseuds/newtheglue
Summary: "You have to truly love Fillory," Plover had told him.Well, bullshit. Quentin fuckinghatedFillory.





	Somewhere Between Misery

**Author's Note:**

> i,, hate this,, so much  
> also: i am not at all trying to take away from quentin's feelings about fillory or ignore his lines from tonight's ep. i just desperately needed him to talk about the mosaic bc uhh,, boyo needs to talk to SOMEONE abt it, even if its just a plant send tweet

_“You have to truly love Fillory,”_ Plover had told him.

 _“Quentin… it has to be you,”_ Zelda had said.

And Alice had given him that look. The _‘you-love-Fillory-more-than-anything’_ look.

Well, bullshit. Quentin fucking _hated_ Fillory.

But he goes, because he’s desperate. Desperate to save Julia and Eliot, because he can’t imagine living without either one.

“Think happy thoughts… about Fillory,” Plover says, and Quentin wants to scream, because how can he think anything good about Fillory when the person who’s twisted it into some _gross, ugly thing_ is breathing over his shoulder?

“Fillory is obviously great,” he tells the plant _(and okay, he feels like a total moron),_ not even really convincing himself. “Y’know, talking bears… alright. Who could hate that? And opium? In the air? That was… smart.”

He can hear Eliot’s voice, breathy and exasperated and _happy_ _. “You would think Teddy would be a little calmer considering the literal opium running through his nervous system.”_ Quentin had smiled then, but now his mood sours.

He says some shit about centaur medicine, but even then, it hadn’t saved Ari, so why would that be an upside?

He hears Penny-Not-Penny mumbling to Alice behind him. Plover tries to intervene, and Quentin snaps at him because he  _can’t do this with them here._ Fillory feels too personal to him, too much like a secret that he _doesn't_ want everyone to know.

He talks about the Fizzy River, and the Upside-Down Desert, and _Nothing. Fucking. Happens._ He can feel that thing in him crumbling. That part of him that’s been buried since… well, since.

“I don’t know. I can’t. I’m sorry. I just- I can’t.” If Alice hears the way his voices breaks, she doesn’t mention it. “I used to love Fillory when I was a kid because _I didn’t know what it was,"_ he tells her, like she even understands what he means. She nods anyway. “Plover left out all the terrible shit, and most of the good stuff he just made up. Even the fucking Cozy Horse is a lie.”

“Remember what you told me about letting go of who you used to be?” She asks, and Quentin feels something heavy settle in his stomach.

He’s trying. God, he's trying to let himself let go, and that seems to be the problem lately. He can’t let go of anything. Not his dad, not Eliot, not their family. Not that angry, childish part of himself that hates himself for not being able to save the world, for not being special.

“I know. I- I’m _trying.”_

“Don’t,” Alice says, smiling. “I don’t want you to. Believing in something, really believing, is almost impossible. But the Quentin I first met… he believed in magic. And in Fillory.”

The Quentin she first met had been naive. That Quentin was some… bright-eyed fool who felt like maybe things would get better with magic. He’d never seen the girl he loved niffin out, and come back as someone… _completely_ new. He’d never stood by and watched his best friend suffer with something he could _never_ understand. He hadn’t watched his friends die. He hadn’t lived an entire lifetime, with Eliot and Arielle and a _son._ He hadn’t watched his wife get sicker, and sicker, until one day their family of four became a family of three. He hadn’t watched Eliot grow older, and older, until he was gone too, and something in Quentin broke and never healed right. That Quentin hadn’t sat on the steps of Castle Whitespire, and had his heart crushed into a billion pieces all over again.

That Quentin didn’t know how it felt to have some… monstrous _thing_ walking around with Eliot’s face, with Eliot’s eyes.

“He changed,” Quentin says. “He grew up.”

“Being an adult doesn’t mean you have to throw away what you used to love.”

“Then what does it mean?”

“Seeing the world through new eyes.” And Quentin’s done that, a million times. He’s so much older than her, and he only realizes that now. And he’s _tired._

She walks away, but turns back for a moment. “And for what it's worth, the Cozy Horse is real. I saw her when I was a niffin. So big you could build a house on it. So…”

She sighs and leaves with Not-Penny in tow.

Quentin really hates being alone with his thoughts.

He turns to the plant. “Okay, it’s just you and me,” he says, and yeah, he _really_ feels like an idiot, but he needs to hear something, or he might go insane.

He swallows. “You know the worst part of getting exactly what you want?” He pauses, emotion rising into his throat. “When it’s not good enough.”

And maybe Quentin was selfish. Maybe he was a horrible person for never feeling content with what he had.

He’d gotten Fillory, but it hadn’t been Fillory, not really, not how he expected it to be. And he’d gotten to be a king, but all he’d really wanted was Alice back. And he’d gotten a lifetime with someone he loved, maybe more than he’d ever loved, but he’d gotten greedy with it, and he’d wanted it in _this_ life too. Then he got magic back, but fuck… he’d lost his dad, and he’d lost Eliot. And now… he had Alice but…

He _still_ wanted Eliot.

Maybe that made him terrible. Maybe he was just as fucked up as Martin, just as greedy.

“Then what do you do?” He asks, like this plant is some fucking source of all-knowing wisdom. “If this can’t make me happy then what would?”

And he doesn’t know if there’s an answer to any of it. Quentin doesn’t know if he gets happy, because why the hell should he?

He feels tears prickling at his eyes because, “Fillory was supposed to mean something! _I_ was supposed to mean something here!”

And maybe he had, once. Maybe he did, six months and lifetime ago. He’d thought so anyway.

“Honestly, fuck Fillory for being so disappointing,” he says flatly. Tears rolls down his cheeks and he feels so… numb. Like every drop of fight has left his body. “You know what? Maybe I was better off just believing that it was fiction.”

Because he hated this place, he truly did.

He hated that it had isolated him from Julia for the longest time. He hated that Plover had made Martin turn it into some hellscape only used in retaliation against the horrors he’d suffered. He hated that his friends always seemed to be plagued with the weight of some war, or poverty, or famine resting on their shoulders. He hated that there hadn’t been enough magic in the entire goddamn kingdom to save Arielle. He hated that it had given him a son, who would later be entirely erased from existence, filling him with a terrible, indescribable pain that only Eliot understood. He hated that it had given him a beautiful life, that Eliot deemed not enough, like it was just some side effect of being the only two people with shared life experience.

And yeah, he also hates that he's talking to a fucking plant.

But somewhere, between all of that pain, and misery, he'd been happy. Fillory had been beautiful to him, once.

When he was a kid, and had just been hospitalized? Those books had saved him. He’d felt _something_ for the first time in forever.

And being a king? That had felt pretty fucking great, even if only for a little while.

And the Mosaic…

“You know the last time I was happy? It was here,” the words feel heavy on his tongue. But it feels freeing, to finally speak, when all he’d done since getting his identity back was suffer quietly. “About fifty years ago.” A borderline-hysterical laugh escapes his lips.

“The Mosaic? The one that Jane didn’t solve in time?” His voice sounds choked. “That’s because I did. I did, and… and _Eliot_ did. And it was beautiful.”

His vision blurs. “I loved every second of it.” He laughs again. “Well maybe not every second, because it was fucking infuriating, but… I miss it. And I was happy- _we_ were happy there.” He swallows thickly. “At least I thought we were.”

He feels the anger returning, bit by bit, inch by inch. “But, hey. That’s Fillory for you. It gives and it gives, but it takes twice as much. There’s always a price, isn’t there?” He wants to say it wasn’t worth it, that he would’ve have traded his lifetime of happiness if it meant he didn’t feel the sting Eliot’s rejection had left. If he didn’t have the feel the gaping wound of seeing Eliot’s body marched around by an evil creature that even the gods feared. But…

“I wouldn’t trade it, you know. For anything. And I know I can’t get it back, but… I can get him back. Maybe not- maybe I can’t get him back like that, but I can get that thing out of him. And I can remember and… and that can be enough.”

He shakes his head, lost. “So, yeah, Fillory fucking sucks. It’s taken everything from me, but- but for fifty years? For fifty years I felt like maybe I had a purpose. Like…” his breath comes in unsteady gasps, tears streaming freely, “...like maybe I was supposed to be here. Fillory… made me feel like I _belonged_ and…” he stares at the sill-dead plant. “There has got to be some power in that.”

He’s desperate. He’s so, so desperate, and he feels suffocated, because _it’s not working and he needs it to, pleaseworkkpleasepleaseplease._

But nothing happens, and he can feel himself breaking even further. He buries his face in his hands and lets out a noise, some ugly mix of a laugh and sob. _It’s not fair. It’s just…_ not.

But then he looks up and, _oh._

It’s coming to life slowly, green climbing the root until suddenly a yellow flower is blooming.

“Guys? Guys, something’s happening!”

**Author's Note:**

> @ that episode: why


End file.
